1327 replies to this topic

[Mike K.]

And that makes this situation even that much more peculiar.

[lanforod]

Ah so. Apparently deficits can be done if approved by the government. VIU has had this approval in place each year since 2019 till now but sounds like it ends after 25/26.
I think they should have fired her a long time ago as it also sounds like they didn’t start to seriously look at fixing the budget issue until the past year. That’s ridiculous.

[Mike K.]

So confusing.

We still don’t have a clear sense of whether she was the architect of the deficits or tried to stop them.

[lanforod]

Blame Covid and then the free fall of international enrolments I think is what they are doing but other universities are managing it far better. Buck stops with her.

She started in 2019 and the deficits started in 2019. That’s a major red flag alone. Plus, before Covid!

[Victoria Watcher]

Brown University student investigated after sending staff ‘DOGE’-esque emails

 

 

A student journalist at Brown University compiled a list of non-instructional staff and emailed each one to ask them to justify their positions, apparently inspired by Elon Musk’s method of gauging employee importance in an organization or government agency. Now, he’s under investigation for causing “emotional distress” to several university employees.

 

Brown sophomore Alex Shieh, who also writes conservative opinion columns for the Boston Globe, built and published a database of 3,805 non-faculty employees at the university. He used artificial intelligence to classify them by importance using publicly available information. According to an entry published by Pirate Wires, he flagged any jobs that involved diversity, equity and inclusion. 

 

“After doing some digging, I discovered that much of the money is being thrown into a pit of bureaucracy,” he said. “The small army of 3,805 non-faculty administrators is more than double the faculty headcount, and makes for roughly one administrator for every two undergrads.”

 

He said his reasoning for the database was the school’s $46 million annual budget deficit, despite what he said is a cost of more than $93,000 in annual tuition and fees to attend the Ivy League university.

 

https://san.com/cc/b...eged violations.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, on March 18, he emailed 3,805 administrators, asking for more details about their jobs.

 

The email included a link to his analysis, which placed administrators in one of three categories: “legality, redundancy, and bullshit jobs,” and asked each to “comment on your current rating in our database,” The Chronicle of Higher Education reports. Shieh based his investigation and terminology on the book “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” by the late anthropologist David Graeber, according to the report.

 

Two days later, the university informed Shieh that he was under review, FIRE Program Officer Dominic Coletti told The Fix in an email Friday.

 

https://www.thecolle...g-investigated/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 03 April 2025 - 12:59 AM.

[Victoria Watcher]

A group of professors and a graduate student are taking the University of British Columbia to court to stop the school from engaging in "political activity," which they claim limits academic freedom and violates legislation requiring it to be non-political.

 

The petition filed in B.C. Supreme Court Monday says the school is breaching the University Act through the use of Indigenous land acknowledgments, promotion of equity and inclusion initiatives and by taking positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict.

 

A section of the act requires universities to be both non-sectarian and non-political, but the group claims UBC is engaging in activities that violate the legislation.

 

"Academic freedom includes rights to pursue the evidence where it leads, to study, research, write, publish and teach without administrative interference and to engage in political discourse," the petition says.

 

The petitioners, which include philosophy professor Andrew Irvine, English professor Michael Treschow and others, claim the university should be prohibited from declaring it is on "unceded Indigenous" land.

 

 

https://www.timescol...ration-10490518

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 07 April 2025 - 09:02 PM.

[lanforod]

That is going to be an interesting case to watch. I guess the judges will have to determine if land acknowledgements are political in nature. DIE policies too - that one could be harder to say is political though that example from UVic we discussed months ago sure seemed to take DIE > merit.

Israel - Palestine is an obvious one, but did UBC take an actual stance? I didn't think so: https://president.ub...st-discussion/ 

[Mike K.]

McGill has just defunded its student union.